Hunger and Homelessness

1) The Problem - As we all know, hunger and homelessness have always been a problem. Anyone from a metropolitan area has probably been haggled for money on more than one occasion. But the issue has become bigger than the beggars in the street. According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors/Sodexho Survey on Hunger and Homelessness, a 24-city survey, requests for emergency food assistance increased by 12%, with 18% of requests having gone unmet. The report goes on to state that “Fifty-four percent of the people requesting emergency food assistance were members of families - children and their parents. Forty percent of the adults requesting food assistance were Employed(U.S. Conference of Mayors/Sodexho Survey on Hunger and Homelessness, p. 3).” Hunger and homelessness are worldwide issues. We, as Americans, tend to think of “poverty” as something that is prevalent more so in other countries, which it is, but every year, we seem to close the gap a little more. As we spend more and more money in Iraq, the Bush administration has continuously looked for ways to keep costs down at home. They have attempted to kill surveys that collect data on such things as hunger and homelessness on three different occasions including this most recent attempt at eliminating the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). SIPP, which costs an estimated $40 million per year, is projected to be slimmed down to $9.2 million. Groups such as the Conference of Mayors and Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) say that if this happens, we will no longer have large-scale information on program participation relating to hunger and homelessness.

2) Effects - “Homelessness is a very undesirable condition, both for the people it affects and for society in general. The effects of homelessness on children, for example, make it easy to see why many communities offer interventions to help keep families with children in housing....